A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: Christmas Poinsettias at Disney World
By Dave Shute
Welcome back to Fridays with Jim Korkis! Jim, the dean of Disney historians, writes about Walt Disney World history every Friday on yourfirstvisit.net.
CHRISTMAS POINSETTIAS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD
By Jim Korkis
As soon as Halloween ends, Walt Disney World immediately trades out orange pumpkins for red poinsettias. Every Christmas season, Walt Disney World is adorned with over 100,000 poinsettias artfully arrayed in attractive baskets, impressive towers and various other arrangements. When the holidays are over, the poinsettias are removed and composted.
The poinsettia was first introduced into the United States from Mexico around 1825 by the first U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Joel Roberts Poinsett. In the early 1900s, it became a popular landscape plant in California, and since then has become the plant most people associate with the holiday season.
On property, the eight foot tall towers which resemble big, red Christmas trees are composed of 170 poinsettias each and have been a traditional favorite at the parks for over two decades. Fourteen of them are displayed property wide with the Magic Kingdom having eleven, Disney’s Hollywood Studios two and one at Epcot.
(c) Disney
It takes a full day to assemble just one tower. The towers are fairly intricate structures with tubing for water built into the support work so that no one has to climb up and refresh the plants each day. Once assembled at the tree farm outside of the Magic Kingdom, they are transported by truck to their assigned location where they are hoisted into place by heavy machinery.
Eric Darden, a horticultural area manager, said “You just want guests to get a show like they’re not going to get anywhere else in the world. Every detail that you can add with the plants and towers just helps with that overall effect.”
86,698 poinsettias are placed in flowerbeds and containers around the resort allocated with 9,994 to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, 24,033 to Epcot, 38,543 to Magic Kingdom, 1,500 to the roadways, 11,156 to Disney Springs area and 1,472 to Disney’s Animal Kingdom.
Around property are also 476 poinsettias hanging baskets that include 30 poinsettia balls, and 446 poinsettia skirts or combination baskets. Each poinsettia ball contains as many as 40 poinsettias per basket. Disney’s Hollywood Studios has 163, Epcot has 132, Magic Kingdom has 79, and Disney Springs 102.
Some of these plants are supplied by local growers in Apopka, but the majority comes from Dixie Green in Centre, Alabama.
“We had some friends down in Florida that we knew, and Disney was looking for some certain plants, and our friends couldn’t locate them so they called us,” Dixie Green President Harlan Richardson said, explaining how the partnership with Walt Disney World began over two decades ago.
“Our poinsettias are a better product,” he said. “There, they plant all their products outside, but it’s so warm down there that the plants are softer. Ours, we can let them get cooler at night and that hardens them up, makes them last longer. We have a stouter plant.”
The more rigid plants from Dixie Green live longer and every shipment that leaves Dixie Green is labeled for a specific area of the park.
“When it’s time to ship, we pull the plants according to which specific flower bed or area they go into,” he said. “We pull the plants, put them all on a rolling rack and each rack is marked. When they get the load, they know exactly where those plants are to be planted.”
Richardson said the process of getting ready to ship between 100,000 and 125,000 poinsettias to the park gets underway in July when planting begins and culminates with semi-trucks filled with potted poinsettias.
“We have a few that go down in December, but the majority of them are already down there,” he said. “They use them at all of the parks and also on their cruise ships.”
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Thanks, Jim! and come back next Friday for more from Jim Korkis!
In the meantime, check out his books, including his new Halloween-appropriate Vault of Walt Volume 9: Halloween Edition, and his other new book, Hidden Treasures of the Disney Cruise Line.
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